Joshua

I can't help noticing. CaRT, in their Sept Briefing Paper say: The Inland Waterways Association ……………. is increasingly vocal in defending the rights of leisure boaters to enjoy access to towpath moorings for short periods during a cruise. They have recently called on us for "action on continuous moorers". The IWA say in this paper: With the increasing concern of the Canal & River Trust (CRT) on the problem of boats overstaying on moorings across the canal network, as shown by a recent board paper by Sally Ash (Ref 1), The Inland Waterways Association ( IWA) feels it appropriate to set out its proposals ….. You do wonder.

I see the current initiative, at least in part, as an attempt to make it easier for you to do just that. I also bought a boat to move about Britain, so I will be giving it my support. I am partly motivated by the fear that if I don’t, one day, I may not be able to move at all. It sounds like a contradiction but a sensible mooring structure is surely essential for maximising the potential to move?

That wouldn’t be true either, but no matter. The apparent requirement today, of having to reduce all communications to a one line ‘tweet’, or something humorous, before anyone bothers to read it, probably contributes to some of the prejudices/ignorance that exist. I wasn’t actually criticising your post, rather using it as a peg to explain how solicitors deal with issues of ‘guilt’. That is a complex issue. If you leave it to one-liners, you get the sort of Daily Mail twaddle reflected in some of the posts in this thread. I tried to balance that. You can’t please everyone!

Actually, that is not completely true either. I would normally avoid threads like this because they are silly and have nothing to do with boats, but in an attempt to slow down some ridiculous prejudices, I'll add my thoughts simply on the basis that I actually have some experience in the field. It basically works like this: A person is innocent until proven guilty. It is for the prosecution to prove a person's guilt not an accused to prove their innocence. For this reason the prosecution present their case/evidence first. Normally, the defence is then presented. However, if the prosecution, at the conclusion of their case, have, in the opinion of the defence (or the judge in the crown court), failed to prove an essential element, or the evidence has been so discredited in cross examination, such that no reasonable court could find the defendant guilty, then the defence may make a submission to the court that the defendant has 'no case to answer'. The court must then make a decision on that point and if they agree, the case ends and the defendant of course need not give any evidence at all (no lies are told). It is the court (jury at crown court and justices in the magistrates court) that decide whether a person is guilty, not the police, not the judge, not council (the lawyers) and not members of Internet forums. Ergo, a solicitor should not judge his clients and cannot KNOW of his client's guilt unless he directly confesses this to the solicitor. When a defendant admits to their solicitor their guilt, the solicitor must explain the above to his client and inform him that he cannot now present a defence on his behalf or say anything to the court that he knows (because of the confession) to be untrue. A solicitor breaking this rule would himself be committing perjury, a very serious offence in itself, but when committed by a solicitor (a person in position of trust) guaranteed to result in a lengthy custodial sentence.* The solicitor can of course, present mitigation on the defendants behalf in a guilty plea and (this is the bit people confuse) allow the defendant to plead not guilty and let the prosecution prove otherwise. The defendants solicitor can test the prosecution evidence in cross-examination but at no time suggest that the witness is lying if he knows that to be untrue. At the conclusion of the prosecutions case, the solicitor may make the application of no case to answer. If this fails, in other words, the court decides there is sufficient evidence to warrant the defendant giving an explanation, then the solicitor will declare that he has no further evidence because anything less would be perjury, this includes allowing the defendant into the witness box. The case ends and the jury or magistrates will retire to make their minds up. Note, the magistrates will be doing so immediately after having decided that there is a case to answer but the test of proof is much higher than in the 'no case' submission, so they may perfectly rationally find the defendant has a case to answer but is not guilty, I have never personally had a case where this has happened. Normally, if a client admits their guilt (very rare) I would first read all the evidence and make sure they are actually guilty of something, you would be surprised! Then, if the client has clearly committed the offence they are charged with and have admitted to, I would advise them to plead guilty or find another solicitor. If they insist on me continuing to represent them and I feel that the evidence against them is weak, it is my duty (as their representative and as a member the high court) to explain this and if I believe it to be in their interests to put forward such a plea. * In a very big drugs trial, where I represented the supposed 'baron', the judge in his summing up to the jury, more or less suggested that I must have fabricated the defence for my client, when I saw him in the police cells, after arrest. If true, this would have been about the worst offence I could commit as a solicitor, barring murder. Horrified, the QC on my team, a very respected man and a judge himself, walked out in the middle of the judges summing up, probably the most disrespectful thing you could ever do to a judge. The fall out resulted in the trial judge having to make a public apology to me in court the next day and later taking early retirement.

My impression, from all the people in marinas that I have met, is that if, when deciding whether or not to buy a boat, there had been no marina to keep it in, they probably wouldn’t have bought one. In that sense, marinas generate their own customers, I don’t believe the towpath presents any competition to them and I am sure they know that. These are two totally different worlds. If I couldn’t CC and had to moor in a marina, I wouldn’t have bought a narrowboat either (I would have gone off shore). Nothing to do with money, I can afford a mooring but just because another CCer can’t afford a marina mooring doesn’t change the fact that neither of us want one. I can’t see why life on one planet should dictate the life on the other. The people that have left marinas recently, have as pointed out already, done so because they can no longer afford it, not because they were enticed out by something better on the towpath. This must be true because nothing has changed yet on the towpath to attract them, in that sense they are not really good indicators of how people might react to the changes been discussed. I wouldn’t mind betting many of them are miserable and would jump at the chance to return to the marina. I would certainly support any scheme that helped them to do so.

Apart from the financial benefits to CaRT I can see some other reasons. If you make CCing difficult by restricting the places a person can stop, moor and organise their life, then some will simply give up trying at all. One of the worst consequences of a bad law is that it often turns normally law-abiding people into criminals. Once a person has broken one law it becomes easier and easier to break others. I am talking life in general but I think it applies here. If you make it easier for people to CC without having to stretch/break the rules, they are far more likely to make a genuine effort to stay within all the rules, all the time, all year round.

Personally, I would be very surprised indeed, if a scheme for CCers like this, had any impact at all on the life style or habits of current marina dwellers. The benefits of a marina (whether a liveaboard or not), have been well documented so don't need repeating, Sir Nibbles immediate capitulation to Chris Pinks offer was so predictable that I shouldn't wonder Chris didn't bet his house on it! However, as has already been demonstrated by some on this thread, it would undoubtedly fuel the "its not fair, I pay more than him" envy. I personally do not want to spend the winter in one place any more than I do in the summer but I can see this scheme helping a lot of other CCers. It would also help me, although all I really want is the VM's and unsold winter moorings suspended for the winter so that I can use them as normal 14 day moorings. Perhaps something midway between these positions would work, say increase the CC licence fee and allow CCers to stay 28 days on all and any of the VM's and untaken winter moorings but with a requirement that one moves to a different VM/vacant winter mooring place after 28 days?

I very much wanted to attend the meeting and was disappointed that I could not due to family commitments. I am in the debt of those who could and did attend and who have my thanks. I am pleased to hear what you say Alan but given that Ash's written comments, must (should) have been made in a measured and deliberate way, I am struggling to feel entirely confident. I will, however, keep an open mind.

I have read the Q&A's prepared by S Ash. Largely, it seems to me, Ash has merely chosen and paraphrased those 'questions' that allow her to re-state CaRT's September briefing paper rather than enlighten or add anything new. On the key issue of VM's there is not a single word of explanation as to what changes, where and how many, CaRT are actually going to make to these. Instead of answering the crucial and often asked question 'What changes to the VM limits are CaRT going to make and why?' Ash has chosen; Why do we need 'better compliance? Her answer to this is bizarre; (1) Because leisure boaters (who are in the majority) and hire boat operators are increasingly reporting congestion at visitor moorings (VMs), meaning that there's less likelihood of their being able to tie up to visit local places. Regardless of who is overstaying at visitor moorings, we need to increase our monitoring and enforcement of stay times at VMs. (2) Leisure boaters make less use of the waterways than continuous cruisers and pay significant mooring fees. They find this unfair. As to (1) this may well be true but what has it got to do with the act of and policing of, CCing? Surely if boaters are complaining that they can rarely find a VM to moor on then clearly there are not enough of them. I don't doubt it, and in my view its nothing to do with the position of the mooring to local amenities, its just the fact that its often hard to moor on unprepared canal bank due to depth of water, huge banks of reeds and bushes to fight your way through, rocks and all manner of other obstacles, including no nice mooring rings to easily tie up on. Of course, nicely prepared VM's are going to be in demand, especially by leisure/holiday boaters, many of whom I imagine believe VM's are the ONLY places to moor, I don't blame them. If it were not for the fact that CCers HAVE to moor on unprepared bank and are therefore better practiced at it (I carry an arsenal of gardening tools including a machete and a long plank), there would probably be a lot of complaints about the lack of VM's from CCers as well. And why the emphasis on leisure boaters being (… in the majority) am I supposed to read 'preferential treatment' if not, what? As to (2), This statement is astonishing, it acknowledges the immature and irrational envy and resentment felt by some boaters, upset because they think someone else is getting a better deal than them. By offering it here as an explanation as to why CaRT are taking action against CCers, Ash gives official credence to an emotion that is totally without merit and should play no part in the serious matter of managing the waterways. As a CCer who comfortably complies with any and all definitions of the term, I find this very disappointing and alarming. Edited for spelling

I disagree, I understand your resignation, but as I said in an earlier post, when I joined the forum 2 years ago, I wrote posts like montysboat, now I have a much more informed view. There is a better world out there for you montysboat, stick with it. I think it is one of the strengths of the forum that it rolls on regardless of the obvious trolls and infantile spats, gobbles them up and spits them out. Roll on!

Allan, I had to read Stuart Mills e-mail several times (slowly and carefully) in order to make any sense of it at all. If this is typical of the standard of professionalism within CaRT god help us! It isn’t just the appalling English, it’s the obviously tortured attempts to avoid providing straightforward facts. Either he has absolutely no idea what he is doing or he is trying (very successfully) to avoid saying anything coherent. The only possible interpretation I have managed is as follows: • Demand for our moorings has fallen • We want to maximise take up of our moorings and have tried to achieve this through sensible pricing. We have, therefore, increased pricing on 46% of our moorings but left the other 56% at last years price or maybe reduced some, I am not sure, one or the other anyway. • On the other hand, maximising take up is not as important as making a profit, (Mills tells it thus - “What we also need to reflect, however, is the costs associated with our running the moorings business and we must at least ensure that there is a sufficient margin in the pricing to make a positive contribution to maintaining the canal network”) • To make a profit, we have to recover what we might have lost by holding the guide price down on 56% of moorings by increasing to 90% the minimum price. • Pricing is a dark art which we don’t understand so we of course sometimes get it wrong, (tI imagine they throw some bones on the floor) but it doesn’t really matter because we simply ignore those figures anyway and just set a price that we can make a profit. A couple of questions immediately pop into my mind. Have CaRT considered reorganising its management of its moorings to achieve a profit rather than simply persisting with the price that covers current costs? What is the cost of managing an empty mooring compared with an occupied one? What are the current costs/income from CaRT moorings?

I still don’t understand this Mike. Firstly, why does making a 14 day mooring 24hrs only, make it less likely that someone will permanently moor on it? Secondly, you normally seem quite sensible, so I am surprised that you try to defend this view by making another odd statement about the behaviour of boaters in marinas. I happen to be in a marina at the moment waiting for some work to be completed on my boat. The people moored here have: Nice tarmacked access roads. Tarmacked parking next to their boat. Purpose made pontoons that make access to their boat simple, safe, clean and convenient. Showers on site. Toilets on site. Diesel whenever they want it by moving their boat a couple of hundred yards. Pump out as above. Potty emptying shed handy Water whenever they want it. Shoreline electrics. Security fencing A shop. A café. Permanent friendly neighbours. and they need NEVER move their boat if they don’t want to and many don’t. Why on earth would they give all that up just because the local town visitor mooring changes from 48hrs to 14 days?

As a CCer, the 24/48 Hr moorings are a real fag in the winter when ‘life’ takes a bit longer and is a bit more difficult to organise. I often have to sail right on past perfectly placed moorings near the town where I need to spend 4 or 5 days obtaining goods and services, moorings which are unoccupied because all the weekend and holiday boaters have stopped boating for the winter, moorings that will remain practically unused for the winter and even worse and more frustrating, in some places, moorings that suddenly become equally empty CaRT ‘permit holder only winter moorings’ and which then, can’t be used at all! If the convenient 24/48hr moorings were standard 14 days, I wouldn’t think, ‘oh great I can permanently live on these’, I would simply stay for the 4 or 5 days I need and then move on.

Bear in mind that the boat comes with an experienced skipper. I believe this initiative is aimed at attracting people who might otherwise be too nervous to book a weeks holiday on a boat that they fear they might not be able to control and give them a chance to find out. I think it's a great idea; it's not compulsory you know. I would support any initiative that promoted better boat handling skills and provides a bit of fun to boot.

Television 'reality' shows feed off the inherent intolerance in humans by simply bringing together people from very different 'worlds' (attitudes, education, privileges, etc. etc.) people who wouldn't by choice naturally mix in every day life. Generally, people of like mind, gravitate together and occupy their own space, so wealthy merchant bankers don't often live in 2 bed semi's on a council estate or park attendants live in 6 bedroom mansions in leafy Surrey lanes. Artists would generally prefer to live in Cornish cottages than swanky city appartments. I spent the last 12 years in a self-made hermitage in rural France together with 2 million other English hermits! Each group tolerates the other by largely ignoring them! The canals can not so easily be segregated, so normally incompatible people, have to share a small space and share limited resources; 'reality show' heaven! Internet Forums make it even more colourful because it enables totally incompatible people to share the same debating floor and freely express their prejudices to one another. In real life they are unlikely to cross paths, if they do, very unlikely to begin a conversation about anything and should they be forced to, the 'conversation' would very likely end in some physical altercation before each went their separate way. Some extremely prejudicial posts make me hang my head in despair but, by trying to make sense of some of these threads, my opinions about the issues have changed dramatically over time, experience suggests that education of this kind is a very effective way to fight intolerance, 'vive la CWDF'. I try to remind myself that the people I share the canals with, all have different ideas about how they want to use those canals (some dramatically different from my own) and everyone has an equal right to be left in peace to try. We should all be defending that right. There are some basic rules of what used to be called 'common decency and respect' and I am sure most people do their best to exercise these, life is too short to waste it worrying about the very small minority who don't.

I take it that the post dates rather than the title dates are correct?

Personally, I would exercise some scepticism over ratings like these. Firstly, on a very general level, I can relate to those studies that are now starting to emerge suggesting that a paranoia about hygiene over the past decade or so, may have led to a lowering of our immune systems ability to combat germs because they don’t get enough exposure to them. And secondly, because the terms of reference of these tests are often plain daft! As an example, the property energy efficiency reports now needed to sell a house. I sold a 250 year old house with walls over 3 ft thick, unless there has been some recent changes, the form doesn’t cater for such a build, so it gets marked as a single brick construction, ie very inefficient!! I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t have standards or checks and balances, just that a large degree of common sense needs to be exercised by the individual relying on them. Obvious bad hygiene practices should be policed but whether or not the level of lighting and ventilation or book keeping meets current ‘accepted’ standards, are in my view questionable hurdles about which I am happy to make my own mind up about. I suppose I have a gut fear (no pun intended) that these things continue the horrible trend to sanitise all the fun out of life.

Have CaRT or BW ever revealed the statistics regarding numbers of people complaining about boats that appear to be overstaying visitor moorings. Such data might put CaRT's policy regarding visitor moorings, into context. I mean, what are the facts behind statements like these in CaRT's Sept Briefing Paper: "Tension has been rising across different sections of the boating community about the number of boats claiming 'continuous cruiser' status without appearing to be 'bona fide' navigators." "while good enforcement is necessary for the credibility of our processes, it is not in itself sufficient to achieve the compliance levels we need to satisfy the great majority of our boating customers and to ensure the harmony amongst waterway users that's needed to maximise public benefit." Given that there are over 35,000 registered boats (have I got that right?) and only 870 visitor mooring points (CaRT's figures), there are bound to be a lot of disgruntled boaters who can't get onto the mooring they want at any given time, but do we know how many are 'over-stayers' and if so, what type of license those over-stayers have?

As a CCCer I have, (reluctantly) finally worked my way through this thread in an attempt to understand where I stand and what my future holds, I have also read carefully CaRT's September Briefing Paper on the subject. I can't deny, the anti CC vitriol from some leisure boaters and CaRT is hard to swallow and I have tried in vain to see any justification for it. I wonder whether the 'aggrieved' 'leisure boaters' would feel so righteous if instead of the law saying that everyone has to have a home mooring unless making a CC declaration, the law said; 'all boaters shall have a licence and comply with the 14 day mooring rule except in those instances where they are moored on a recognised fixed mooring It amounts to exactly the same thing but doesn't somehow give the impression that having a mooring makes you 'normal' or gives you superior rights and privileges. It also occurs to me, that if the £25 a day 'charges' are introduced, I can see how this might be very attractive to a number of leisure boaters who only use their boats once or twice a year for family holidays. £250 in return for picking a nice location of your choice on a well maintained mooring in a nice safe urban location close to all local amenities would probably seem quite cheap for a 10 day family holiday. Not sure how they would retain the position and still make daily cruise trips, but I suppose they could lay a towel out or something and having paid CaRT for the mooring would presumably have their support in shoeing away any one who tried to 'steal' it? As far as CaRT's Briefing Paper is concerned, I don't see this (as some have interpreted it) as an attempt to define CCCing but rather a way to decide the appropriate weapon to use against it: 0 Miles - The Big Gun. Unleash 'God'. CaRT estimate the Salvation Army and selected priests will take "10 to 15 years" to chase this lot back onto dry land. 1 to 5km - The Sappers Unleash the lawyers and seize the boats. 5km to 10km - The Pipes and Drums No direct action needed, the sound of God and lawyers coming will be enough. Over 10km - The Dogs Keep them running, make CCing (through mooring hassles and inciting prejudices) so unpleasant that it becomes unfashionable. That is how I read the briefing paper, I thought CaRT were quite candid about it.

Sorry for delay in coming back, I ran out of data allowance and had to wait for new monthly allowance to start! Yes Matty that is the Ivy I am referring to. I passed her again this afternoon and decided to stop and follow up on the suggestion by Chris. Alas there are no boards I could lift. Actually got into a pickle stopping. Fierce cross wind taking me away from the tow path that I needed to moor up to, jumped off the boat with a centre line that was attached using a steel hook and spring clip. Ping! I stood there with the unattached rope in my hands and my boat skating away towards the opposite bank, my girl friend freaked out when she realised I had ‘abandoned’ her but calmed down and following some instructions from the tow path managed to get the boat back to me! A couple of lessons learnt not least the risks of using a snap on attachment. Ivy is still afloat so I suppose she has just been unloaded at the bow, I’ve noted more carefully her waterline and will check again next week when I pass again.

Thanks George, I know what you mean, our boat also has very little free board and I have had similar comments. But in this case I am judging Ivy on her relative level, bow to stern and in particular on the tell-tail normal bow level from water marks on her hull. Of course it could be she has empty bow water tanks (especially at this time of year) or a couple of big bags of coal in the stern, anything really, just struck me something wrong, you know, gut feeling thing.

Does anyone know how to contact the owner of little (tug like) nb 'Ivy' currently moored next to bridge 25 (near Willington) on the T & M canal? I am just passing it now and it looks to me to be lying unusually low in the stern (possible stern gear leak ?). I could be wrong but no harm in checking.

Many thanks Paul for the links and offer of help, unless someone comes up with a compelling reason why we shouldn’t, we’ll see you next year.

So long as the pubs are kept warm we’ll soldier on!